Bird-watching flock expected at festival

Margaret Elman (left) of Pacific Beach and Paul Zepf of Mira Mesa watched birds last week on a San Diego Audubon Society field trip at Kit Carson Park in Escondido. The San Diego Bird Festival will be held from March 4 to 7 at Mission Bay Park. At top is a great-tailed grackle spotted in Escondido.
— Howard Lipin / UNION-TRIBUNE

Margaret Elman (left) of Pacific Beach and Paul Zepf of Mira Mesa watched birds last week on a San Diego Audubon Society field trip at Kit Carson Park in Escondido. The San Diego Bird Festival will be held from March 4 to 7 at Mission Bay Park. At top is a great-tailed grackle spotted in Escondido.
— Howard Lipin / UNION-TRIBUNE

On a Thanksgiving weekend, when Bill Thompson was 7, he met his “spark bird.” Among bird-watchers, that’s the creature that first incites a lifelong interest in birding.

Thompson watched a snowy owl sail into the backyard of his Iowa home and perch on the branch of an oak tree.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Thompson, 48, the keynote speaker at the San Diego Bird Festival. The four-day event beginning Thursday ﻿offers more than 50 workshops, lectures and birding trips countywide. “That was one of those winters when there was a crash in the population of lemmings, or small rodents, in the Arctic tundra. The owls had nothing to eat, so they started drifting south to look for food. I ran inside and got the field guide and looked it up. I was excited to find it.”

The annual San Diego Bird Festival draws birders from across the United States primarily because of its location and the diversity of avian life.

The county’s desert, coast and mountain areas are nearby, ﻿and each habitat is home to different species of birds.

Festival-goers can participate in bird-watching excursions to North County lagoons, the Anza-Borrego Desert, Palomar Mountain and the Coronado Islands off Baja.

The event will take place at the Marina Village Conference Center in Mission Bay, where workshops include a range of family-friendly learning opportunities. On March 6, the “Owl Pellet Dissection” class invites participants to dissect the regurgitated skeletal remains of a raptor’s meal in the form of a sterilized pellet.

A bird-calling workshop later that day is headed by Nicole Perretta, who has imitated birdcalls on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

Perretta, 38, lives in Chula Vista with her husband and two children. She said she started mimicking the call of ravens when she was 9 and the birds would follow her home from school. The most difficult call, she said, is the domestic goose, an effort that combines making a loud squeal and channeling the sound through the nose.

“When I do my class, I encourage laughing,” Perretta said. “The best way to get the sound out is to act like the bird — a crow bobs up and down. Practicing calls offers a chance to laugh at yourself, but when you get it right, it enhances birding. They come to you instead of you chasing them.”

The Birding by Bike Field Trip on Thursday ﻿is led by Jim Pea, who reports that it is possible to see 50 to 100 species of shorebirds and waterfowl. The ride along the San Diego River Estuary, Mission Bay and Fiesta Island is set up to allow for a six-mile, 10-mile or 25-mile excursion. Bike rentals are available for $25.

“This route is flat,” said Pea, 63. “There will be so many stops, a woman pushing a baby stroller will probably pass you. We are in the middle of the city, so we’ll probably stop for a sandwich and look at birds while we are there.”

Birding began to increase in popularity with the emergence of optics, the publication of field guides and the advancement of air travel. Passionate birders have a life list, an accounting of the types of birds they spot, the location and other details. The goal is to document as many bird species as possible, and some birders have died while adding to their lists.

Thompson, who also will lead the festival’s Birding Along the Border trip, is the editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest and the author of many books, including “The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America.”

Now a resident of Ohio, Thompson has led countless birding trips across North America and he has watched birds in more than 25 countries.

“A pelagic trip off the coast of California is about the only place … where I have a shot of adding four or five new species to my life list,” Thompson said.

“I’d like to see the albatross, the boobies and the auklets, these little birds that nest on rocky cliffs. Superficially, they look like little penguins. We don’t have those in Ohio.”

Thompson said that humans are easily attracted to birds because they are often visually beautiful, vocally interesting, and we are fascinated with flight.

“When is that not amazing?” he asked. “It’s like you are given a new set of eyes and ears when you get sparked on birds. That’s a big part of my mission: to get other people excited about birds at any age.”

On a Thanksgiving weekend, when Bill Thompson was 7, he met his “spark bird.” Among bird-watchers, that’s the creature that first incites a lifelong interest in birding.

Thompson watched a snowy owl sail into the backyard of his Iowa home and perch on the branch of an oak tree.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Thompson, 48, the keynote speaker at the San Diego Bird Festival. The four-day event beginning Thursday ﻿offers more than 50 workshops, lectures and birding trips countywide. “That was one of those winters when there was a crash in the population of lemmings, or small rodents, in the Arctic tundra. The owls had nothing to eat, so they started drifting south to look for food. I ran inside and got the field guide and looked it up. I was excited to find it.”

The annual San Diego Bird Festival draws birders from across the United States primarily because of its location and the diversity of avian life.

The county’s desert, coast and mountain areas are nearby, ﻿and each habitat is home to different species of birds.

Festival-goers can participate in bird-watching excursions to North County lagoons, the Anza-Borrego Desert, Palomar Mountain and the Coronado Islands off Baja.

The event will take place at the Marina Village Conference Center in Mission Bay, where workshops include a range of family-friendly learning opportunities. On March 6, the “Owl Pellet Dissection” class invites participants to dissect the regurgitated skeletal remains of a raptor’s meal in the form of a sterilized pellet.

A bird-calling workshop later that day is headed by Nicole Perretta, who has imitated birdcalls on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

Perretta, 38, lives in Chula Vista with her husband and two children. She said she started mimicking the call of ravens when she was 9 and the birds would follow her home from school. The most difficult call, she said, is the domestic goose, an effort that combines making a loud squeal and channeling the sound through the nose.

“When I do my class, I encourage laughing,” Perretta said. “The best way to get the sound out is to act like the bird — a crow bobs up and down. Practicing calls offers a chance to laugh at yourself, but when you get it right, it enhances birding. They come to you instead of you chasing them.”

The Birding by Bike Field Trip on Thursday ﻿is led by Jim Pea, who reports that it is possible to see 50 to 100 species of shorebirds and waterfowl. The ride along the San Diego River Estuary, Mission Bay and Fiesta Island is set up to allow for a six-mile, 10-mile or 25-mile excursion. Bike rentals are available for $25.

“This route is flat,” said Pea, 63. “There will be so many stops, a woman pushing a baby stroller will probably pass you. We are in the middle of the city, so we’ll probably stop for a sandwich and look at birds while we are there.”

Birding began to increase in popularity with the emergence of optics, the publication of field guides and the advancement of air travel. Passionate birders have a life list, an accounting of the types of birds they spot, the location and other details. The goal is to document as many bird species as possible, and some birders have died while adding to their lists.

Thompson, who also will lead the festival’s Birding Along the Border trip, is the editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest and the author of many books, including “The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America.”

Now a resident of Ohio, Thompson has led countless birding trips across North America and he has watched birds in more than 25 countries.

“A pelagic trip off the coast of California is about the only place … where I have a shot of adding four or five new species to my life list,” Thompson said.

“I’d like to see the albatross, the boobies and the auklets, these little birds that nest on rocky cliffs. Superficially, they look like little penguins. We don’t have those in Ohio.”

Thompson said that humans are easily attracted to birds because they are often visually beautiful, vocally interesting, and we are fascinated with flight.

“When is that not amazing?” he asked. “It’s like you are given a new set of eyes and ears when you get sparked on birds. That’s a big part of my mission: to get other people excited about birds at any age.”

Marcia Manna covers arts, entertainment and community news for the Union-Tribune.